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When I think about my favourite soups, French onion soup is definitely one of the first ones that comes to mind. Even though it is one of my favourites I don't make it all that often as it requires a bit of time and effort to make. A French onion soup is basically a soup consisting of caramelized onions in a beef broth that is topped with a slice of bread and a bunch of cheese that is all melted and gooey and golden brown and good. How could you possibly go wrong with a sweet oniony broth topped with melted cheesy goodness?

Throughout fall I have been
roasting red peppers
and freezing them so that I can enjoy them for the rest of the year and along the way I have not been able to resist using a few of them! I have really been enjoying quinoa since I discovered it and in particular, using it to make simple salads with seasonal ingredients and I figured that a roasted red pepper quinoa salad would be perfect for fall! Keeping things simple is the name of the game and I went with some onions and garlic in addition to the roasted red pepper and quinoa. A salad such as this just cries out for a fresh herb and oregano seemed to fit the bill. Roasted red peppers are an little on the sweet side so some salty feta would fit nicely and some chick peas would bulk up the salad a bit. With that I just needed a dressing and since roasted red peppers and balsamic vinegar go well together a
balsamic vinaigrette
was the obvious choice. Salads like this one make for great side dishes or even light meals and in fact I have been enjoying the leftovers for breakfasts this week. Speaking of the leftovers, they are nice either warmed up in the microwave or straight from the fridge.

The portobello mushrooms in creamy curry have been on my mind ever since I had them at Vij's restaurant a couple of months ago. I am not as familiar with Indian spices and blends and much to my dismay I was never able to decide what was used in the dish. My recent trip to Italy and the amazing mushrooms pastas that I enjoyed while there inspired me to take a new approach to the dish and go with some flavours that I was a little more comfortable with. I kept things nice and simple and flavoured the creamy porcini sauce with shallots, garlic, thyme and a healthy helping of parmigiano reggiano that was melted into the sauce. One thing that I like about using the dried porcini mushrooms is that they pack a ton of mushroomy flavour and it is really easy to capture it all by using the water that the mushrooms were soaked in in the dish. If you can still get outside and use the grill it will add a touch of smokiness to the portabella mushrooms that goes really well with the creamy sauce. If not, an indoor grill will work just fine. This version of the dish ended up being fantastic and I enjoyed it so much that I have already made it twice! The first time I served it as an appetizer with some crusty bread to soak up all of the extra creamy mushroom sauce and the second time I served it over a bed of spinach as the main dish in a lighter meal.

I am a huge fan of chocolate turtles! It is really difficult to resist those tiny turtles made with caramel and pecans all wrapped up in chocolate and during the holidays I often go through a few boxes of them. When I came across this recipe for cranberry turtle bars on No Fear Entertaining last year I knew that I would have to make them! You really can't go wrong with buttery shortbread topped with caramel, pecans and chocolate and I was really intrigued by the idea of throwing those tart little cranberries into the mix as well. Unfortunately I misplaced the bookmark and did not end up finding it until there were no cranberries left and I have been patiently awaiting their return. Now that the cranberries are back I finally got the chance to make them and they were well worth the wait!

Not too long ago I made some
fried green tomatoes with shrimp remoulade
that was exceptionally good and left me wanting for more. One gracious commenter paved the way by mentioning a crab version which sounded perfect, especially considering that I just happened to have some crab in my freezer. Unfortunately I did not have the time to make it before leaving town and I feared that the green tomatoes might be done by the time I got back. This weekend my fears were laid to rest at the farmers market which had even more green tomatoes than when I left. I immediately grabbed some of those green tomatoes and whipped up a batch of fried green tomatoes with crab remoulade that turned out to be just as good as they had sounded, if not better. With my cravings satisfied for now, I contemplate what else I can do with fried green tomatoes.

When I was in Italy on vacation I had the great luck to come across something that I had been wanting to try for a long time, truffles. I first came across them on a menu at a restaurant in the form of a pasta that also included one of my favorite foods, mushrooms. As soon as I saw that there was no need to read the rest of the menu and I ordered immediately. I was a bit disappointed to see that there were not all that many mushrooms in the pasta but it tasted great and the aroma and flavour was undeniably amazing! After that encounter I made a point to look for truffles and I quickly came across some truffle oil and eventually I found a small jar of truffles both of which I picked up. Now that the chaos of Thanksgiving was over I finally got the chance to come up with my own version of a mushroom pasta with truffles.

I knew that I wanted some nice sized pieces of mushrooms in this one so I started with a bunch of wild mushrooms including shiitake, oyster and cremini. The mushrooms in the pasta that I had in Italy were likely dried porcini mushrooms and since they, and the liquid that they have been soaked in, have such a strong and concentrated mushroom flavour I could not say no to them. I wanted the mushroom and truffle to dominate so I kept the other flavours down and went simply with a shallot, a bit of garlic and thyme. Cream works nicely as both a binder and for helping to absorb and distribute the flavour so I added a bit near the end without drowning the pasta in it. Of course I finish the dish off with the star of the show in the form of truffle oil and some shaved black truffles. The mushroom and truffle pasta turned out to be even better than the one that I remember having in Italy! I will definitely be making this a lot in the future!

I was quickly making my way through my
roast turkey
leftovers, enjoying some
turkey sandwiches with cranberry sauce
and some
turkey Cuban sandwiches
, when I remembered that there was one other thing that I wanted to try doing with them and luckily I still had just enough left. Last year some time shortly after I had finished all of my turkey leftovers I had come across the idea of Thanksgiving leftovers eggs benedict on the Del Frisco's menu by chef Thomas Dritsas and it sounded like a good way to enjoy some of those leftovers. This recipe is pretty simple given that pretty much everything is leftovers that simply need to be heated and the only real thing that you need to do is poach a few eggs. Within a few minutes I had my 'eggs benedict' and I have to say that smothering the already amazing Thanksgiving dinner flavours in a runny egg yolk works really well! (Feel free to throw in any leftover stuffing or mashed potatoes that you may have lying around.)

Although Thanksgiving dinner is always amazing it is the leftovers that I like the most! In particular, may favourite way to enjoy some of those leftovers is a
roasted turkey sandwich
stuffed full with cranberry sauce. After enjoying a few of those sandwiches this year it was time to try something new, a
Cuban style leftover turkey sandwich
that I came across last year on
Panini Happy
. The Cuban sandwich generally consists of roast pork, ham, swiss cheese, pickles, mayo and mustard and this Thanksgiving leftovers version uses roast turkey rather than the pork and it adds a healthy dose of cranberry sauce to the mix. With all of the cranberry sauce, mayo and mustard in these sandwiches, they can be a bit messy but they are definitely worth it! The cranberry sauce works surprisingly well with all of the other flavours in this sandwich, so well in fact that you will hardly notice all of the cranberry sauce and mayo dripping down your chin after taking that last bite.

Alright, enough with the boring side dishes already! It's time for the good stuff, the dessert. The dessert is easily the most anticipated part of the Thanksgiving meal and I like to go all out for it. I could not believe that I did not have any pumpkin in my Thanksgiving dinner yet so a pumpkin pie cheesecake seemed like the perfect choice. I could not resist using a gingersnap snap crust as the ginger and pumpkin flavour combo is an amazing one. I then took things a step further and covered the cheesecake with some home made caramel sauce . One of the things that I like about a cheesecake is that you can easily make it the day before so you can lighten the load for an already large meal. In fact it is best to let the cheesecake cool completely and then let it chill out in the fridge overnight so it really should be made a day ahead. This pumpkin pie cheesecake was the perfect end to my Thanksgiving dinner!

When I was at the grocery store picking up the cranberries, they had one of those buy two and get them cheap so I ended up walking home with twice as many cranberries as I really needed. It was ok though as there was another thing that I wanted to try with cranberries, a fresh cranberry relish. This relish is pretty simple consisting of fresh cranberries, an apple, an orange and sugar to balance out the tartness of the cranberries. Yes, you read that right; there is a whole orange with the peel and all in there. (The peel gives it a really amazing orange flavour.) This cranberry relish is certainly not a replacement for a cranberry sauce but it is wonderful in its own right. It is so fresh and vibrant and the flavour combination is pretty amazing. I could easily eat a large bowl of this like a salad or it would go well on some vanilla yogurt.

No roast turkey dinner is complete without an accompanying cranberry sauce! Because a Thanksgiving dinner is such a production, I wanted to keep the cranberry sauce simple and yet I did not want it to be the same old cranberry sauce from last year. Cranberry sauce is particularity good with this as it is easy to add simple flavours and this time I went with some freshly grated ginger. The ginger added a nice hint of the exotic to the cranberry sauce without overpowering it and without detracting from the enjoyment of that turkey and cranberry sauce flavour combo.

Although the
herb roasted turkey breast
was the center piece of my Thanksgiving meal, this side dish was what I was looking forward to. You just can't go wrong with creamy mashed potatoes and I had been dreaming about these mashed potatoes for a while now. I don't make mashed potatoes all that often because I tend to inhale them a little too quickly but this was a special occasion so it was alright. Adding cheese to mashed potatoes is a sure fire way to add a ton of flavour and this time I wanted to try using a creamy blue cheese to give them a nice tanginess. Blue cheese also goes well with sautéed mushrooms and sweet caramelized onions and the plan was to top those fluffy white cloud like mashed potatoes with them.

This mashed potato dish is pretty straight forward to make but because of all of the slicing, chopping, sautéing, boiling and mashing they take a bit of time and effort but they are well worth it! The tangy blue cheese mellows out nicely in the mashed potatoes adding that hint of flavour without overpowering them. The mashed potatoes would have been pretty amazing just like that but topping them with the caramelized mushrooms and onions took them out of this world! The flavour combination of the blue cheese with the mushrooms and sweet caramelized onions was fantastic and serving them on those heavenly white cloud like mashed potatoes finished the dish off perfectly.

For me the center piece of the Thanksgiving dinner is definitely the turkey. Because I am not usually cooking for a huge family I generally find it easier to just get a turkey breast rather than a whole turkey. Turkey breasts can come quite large with the one that I got this time weighing in at 6 pounds without any bones so you can easily feed a small family with just one. Although I sometimes miss not having the whole carcass to use to make turkey stock I definitely enjoy using the leftovers that I do get to make turkey sandwiches with cranberry sauce .

When I was coming up with my Thanksgiving menu the first thing that I started on was an appetizer. I was planning the menu shortly after making the
hot cheesy mushroom dip
so dips were on my mind and on a whim I thought; Why not a cheesy pumpkin dip? A quick search on the web showed that not only had it been done before, but that it was quite common! This
pumpkin dip
is pretty simple, consisting of
pumpkin puree
, cream cheese, sugar and pumpkin pie spices. This pumpkin dip kind of reminds me of a pumpkin cheesecake and as a gingersnap crust is wonderful on a pumpkin cheesecake I was immediately thinking about serving the dip with gingersnap cookies. If you want to keep it a bit healthier, sliced apples also work great.

I am back from my whirlwind of adventures in Italy! On my a little under 2 week vacation in Italy I visited Rome, The Vatican, Sorrento, Capri, Venice, Milan and Florence and I had a great time! In addition to having fun, I of course enjoyed a lot of good food! My favourite had to be the Italian style thin crust pizzas and I had more than a few of them while I was there. I also enjoyed a lot of good pastas and I gorged myself on gelato including a surprisingly tasty gorgonzola gelato.

About Me

I came to realize that my meals were boring and that I had been eating the same few dishes over and over again for years. It was time for a change! I now spend my free time searching for, creating and trying tasty new recipes in my closet sized kitchen.